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Camtasia by TechSmith captures video, and makes it very easy to capture movement for a video illustration. Xvidcap captures video, but I have never gotten it to work, and it is not as elegant as Camtasia.

There aren't any good genealogy programs in Linux and it is only that which now holds me to windows OS. Two that l use are Brothers Keeper and Family Tree Maker. Gramps is ancient compared to what's available in windows. I hope someone in the Linux community with the know how will address this shortcoming.

I have installed Brothers Keeper using Wine but l can't get it to work with regards to importing a Gedcom file or backup data and such. I'm sure it could be done but not for a person of my meager experience.

Funny - I've been an engineer since 1964 and I haven't used a single MS based program. I tend to use C, C++ and Fortran IV. We do use some really mundane softwares like Algol and Polyforth, but then I've only worked for small companies like Boeing Aerospace, IBM and NASA so I am probably in the minority.

And search as hard as I can I can't find a single CAD/CAM program that is from MS.

I use an engineering application called Inventor by Autodesk. It does not run on Linux, and the company has no plans (or reason) to switch to some other program. Unless Autodesk plans to support Linux, or some very inexpensive and file compatible application comes out, we're stuck in the MS Universe.

I have to use a dual-boot system and I would *love* to get rid of windoze once and for all but unforunately, I need a working webcam and decent voip to keep in touch with my fiance in mainland China. So far, the best I've managed to get working in Linux is for my Quickcam Pro 4000 to show my picture (to me) in Gnomemeeting (and Skype is almost useless for voice because of the noise).

I just loaded MEPIS on my spare HD in my desktop and can mulitboot between WINXP and Linux. The OS and apps included are overwelming but look great.
I use the dutch speller in MS Word a lot, and do not know of any for OpenOffice
In MS Excel I use the statical functions(histogram) and the database query via ODBC (for Paradox) a lot, and do not know of any for OpenOffice Calc
so I am not sure if Linux is the way to go in 2005.
Happy 2005
Ronald

""I use the dutch speller in MS Word a lot, and do not know of any for OpenOffice
""

If you go to OpenOffice.org you will find Aspell and Ispell for dozens of languages including Dutch. Since Mepis was created as a live CD there had to be limits to the support files loaded with it. Most full blown Linux distributions make all those languages available with the intial install.

Most folks have trouble thinking from an International box versus the Microsoft mini-box. There are thousands of programs that can obsorb virtually every Microsoft program. The problem is that we begin to confuse "need" and "comfort level." I have run 100% Open Source for almost 3 years and I'm the CIO for a National Bank who can certainly afford to buy what ever I need . I've felt more in control - more secure - and a lot more comfortable with my IT budget since we switched.

You certainly didn't look very hard or far. Go to http://www.linux-ocr.ekitap.gen.tr/
and you'll find a dozen or so OCR programs for Linux including Kooka which ships with the KDE desktop. I convert books to audio using an HP PSC500 and LOCR or Kooka.

Folks! Do a www.google.com search for LINUX OCR and you'll find a bunch of them.

I need to be able to run both Mac and Win apps on Linux boxes, mostly because there are not any truely professional music notation packages available for Linux. Those music notation packages available are either stone-age text input packages AND/OR with printed output that look horrid. Unfortunately my experiences with MOL and WINE have been dismal. WINE as delivered with SuSE 9.2 doesn't even run the calculater properly let alone AppleWorks, RagTime or Finale. MOL will run in it's own window under YDL 4, but has wierd time-outs of up to 30 seconds where the MacOS freezes in mid-stride. I've not been successful in getting it to load completely in it's own virtual terminal.

I like to do my own income taxes (U.S.) and have not found a way to do it in Linux.
I am also doing so video editing of old home movies on VCR and the few tools available are not yet up to the task. I have to use XP also for this.

as a genealogist I need the LDS source file viewer program. I have managed to get it to install using wine but cannot access the data CDs, This is the only application for which we still need a windows system at home. And of course there are still those websites that don't recognise a decent browser :-(

I too only use windose for genealogy. There is nothing even close to what has been written for windose. Hopefully someday someone will write something to meet our needs. Tried Ftree this week and it seems to be better then Gramps but certainly not even close to Brother's Keeper or Family Tree Maker. Geneweb l couldn't figure out at all. Over all l love using SimplyMepis as it is so easy meets most of my needs and hate to have to go over to windose for my genealogy. Have been looking at the prospect of trying Win4Lin and installing Win 98 on top of Mepis and see if l can get Brother's Keeper working that way. I did get Brother's Keeper installed using Wine but haven't figured out how to work with the data.

I have found a program called Heredis a few years back,
and it is free, you can find it here http://www.myheredis.com/
but there does not seem to be a Linux version,
perhaps you can use Wine or a different emulator.

Looking forward to Kexi--or similar--but until then I still need Access. (MySQL is a little too complicated for me right now--haven't figured out how to attach a GUI front end to it. Hey, maybe that could be an article?? Newbies to Linux are not necessarily newbies to computing in general.)

Unfortunately the Linux version doesn't give you an option to open Access databases (the win version does). So unless something changes in this from the beta, linux users will be out of luck on this point. It's a nice database app though.

I switched pretty much everything over to Linux, with the exception of personal finance. I tried KMyMoney2 and did okay for a few months, but wanted to have more in the way of reports and OFX import. I switched to GnuCash and got the reports and OFX imports (WooHoo!!!) but ran into problems now and then - and noticed that there is no CSV or QIF export, so I'm pretty much committed to GnuCash (well, at least until KMyMoney2's GnuCash import filter is production).

I finally gave up and installed Quicken Basic under Wine. I should have done that a year ago. I just need to figure out how to get GnuCash imported to KMyMoney2 and then exported to Quicken (or just scratch the whole year's worth of data and start fresh).

basicly i have to use IE to check what the coding looks like in IE other then that i don't really need to as i have found linux equivelents that work as good or better than their windows counterparts
I'm glad the wine project is there I'd have to dual boot if i didn't have wine

I am diabetic and use a free but not open tracking an graphing program with which I can print out reports for my Dr.; also a couple of multi volume bible commentaries and various bible translations not available on Linux yet

I use Mepis and two must have medical (diabetic) software, Smith Medical Cozmanager and Abbott Labs Diabetes Co-Pilot. I have tried them with Crossover Office, QEMU, Win4Lin Pro and VMware. VMware will not install on my distro. CrossoverOffice will not let dotNET install (required for graphics), QEMU will not install either program and Win4Lin with XP Pro givea a "Catistrophic Failure" message on installation, and with 2000Pro loads but ":active x failed to load graphical program. Cannot create Database files"

Yes as not many Linux applications are written for Amatuer Radio Sound Card modes. gMFSK comes close but could be better. For slow scan television, have never had QSSTV to work under Fedora, Mandrake or Debian and it's off shoots, Knoppix or Mepis, program loads and installs fine, but not able to decode one picture, yes have messed with the slant correction to no avail. KPSK seems to only work under Fedora correctly, has problems running KPSK on Mandrake or Debian, author said I need to download the source and mess with it, WHY???. Linux has a long way to go to catch up with Amatuer Radio applications that work right off on Windows sad to say. I am not a programer or do not I know where to start, am a old geezer and would take to long to learn.

I have a Linux LAN at home and use WinXP at work. My wife uses a Linuxworkstation at home and Windows machines at her work. I find the intercompatability of Linux versions of StarOffice, the GIMP, and so on, works well for me. I do use spreadsheets but no other financial or database apps. I have no real desire to use Win apps at home. I can always use rdesktop and work on my office computer if it is necessary.

I have several clients I'd like to move over to Linux on the desktop (they're already using Linux as servers) but they require either Quickbooks or Peachtree Accounting apps. Since Intuit and Peachtree don't have Linux native versions of these apps, Windows is still required at these offices.

In addition, I have an insurance brokerage as a client and they still windows for insurance apps only running on Windows and IE in order to some insurance company sites for policy applications.